<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>shadowed by a thousand pines by terriku</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26295181">shadowed by a thousand pines</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/terriku/pseuds/terriku'>terriku</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>silhouettes [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Almyra (Fire Emblem), Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, really this is just an excuse for almyra world-building</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:41:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,972</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26295181</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/terriku/pseuds/terriku</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In Almyra, in the small courtyard of your youth, Khalid stands beneath an acacia tree and tells you that he has returned from Fódlan. It is behind him now he says, as if leaving it behind were as easy and natural to him as a snake shedding its own skin. But soaring in the brilliant sky on a white wyvern, or standing half-shadowed in the King’s court, you understand the man who you see is not the boy you knew.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Claude von Riegan &amp; Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>silhouettes [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2279732</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>shadowed by a thousand pines</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This plays fast and loose with FE3H canon mostly because ... I don't care for it, but also because established Almyra lore could probably fill a thimble.</p><p>You can certainly read this as Claude/Reader, though I'm not sure I would recommend it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There is a lone wyvern flying in the sky. This is unusual in the heat of summer, but not improbable for warriors are permitted such freedoms. Such is the way in Almyra that those with strength may have all that they can take – even the horizon. But the wyvern that bursts through a cloud is white and it comes from the east. That far above, with the sun at their backs, you cannot see who the rider is but their name is in thundering in your heart, half logical deduction and half instinctual. You would know him anywhere.</p><p>You turn from the market without buying anything at all, not even the syrup-soaked pastries that remind you of home. Walking at first, and then running like a dark stream flowing downhill. From street to alley, to wall, to the inner palace gate and over the top, you make your way back for the prodigal son’s return. You will wait for him, of course, as you have always done. That is the nature of a blade after all, to wait until used by its master.</p><p>*</p><p>The courtyard is sparse. It has always been so, for your master places utmost emphasis on emptiness. White-washed walls contrast with the brick. A single bougainvillea trails the sparse lattice that separates the inner from the outer. There is a basin of clear water, but no fountain. It is filled every day and emptied every night by hand. Once, when your master was younger and the royal children were younger, there were students to do this. But you are the last one remaining, and no longer a student either. Still, a master is always a master no matter how many years pass. The other courtyards of the great palace might be overflowing with lavender and roses and tulips but here it is only the acacia tree, the singular bougainvillea, the white stone and the sun and sky above.</p><p>Your master sits within the shade of the acacia most of these days. The years have weathered him like sun-bleached leather. His knuckles are warped with inflammation, but his voice is still deep and clear like the cold mountain streams fed by ice-melt. He says that there is the world without, and the world within. So long as one holds a well within which stays still, then one can weather all the tumults of the world. What he means, of course, is that any shadow whose strength is not the bright warrior’s honor and pride, but the silver-flash-of-blade-in-the-night must love something greater than themselves or they will be lost. His hands will never grip a blade again but your master’s reach is far. He has trained two generations of shadows, of which you are the youngest; the only one kneeling on the sun-warmed brick waiting. The only one whose charge has fled the homeland that ought to be his birthright and traded it for another name entirely. Alone, unwavering, but waiting. It has been years. The hours should not stretch and itch, but they do. <em>He is here</em>, you think, <em>he is here but not here at all</em>. As if sensing this disturbance in you, your master cracks one eye open and gives you a withering glance. How can he understand that the well in your chest is quaking now? The stillness and calm you knew when he was abroad is gone. Wherever he was then, battlefield or heathen temple, how could it have been more dangerous than the court to which he returns? And now; why must he return now? Too late to become a man in the eyes of all the minor-princes and the officers, but too early to wrest the throne in a single decisive stroke. His father yet lives, hale and hearty for all his age. Your master shuts his eye again. Silence settles onto the courtyard, but there are no answers to be found in the emptiness. Your heart stutters alone.</p><p>Khalid arrives after dinner. He is a beloved son who cannot be spared from a private familial meal. But he is Almyran, so he knows too to pay respect to a mentor and he is not so much an easterner to forget his blade. The sun has set, but the moon hasn’t fully risen yet. On the knife’s edge between night and day, he stands on the threshold of the courtyard as if waiting to be invited in. No matter what the other courtiers may say, no one has ever questioned his lineage. He is a child of the royal line, of the King of Almyra and he needs no invitation to enter at all. He is dramatic, you think, to pick this time to make his grand entrance. But then, Khalid has always had a flair for dramatics. He knows how to play a scene for the audience.</p><p>In the dim flickering light of the lanterns, you try and search his face for any shadow of familiarity. Six years lie between you and it is very clear that the boy that left is now a man returned. He smiles, bright, wide, and you know it is a knife. Not in the way it echoes in his eyes – this is a genuine smile; you do not doubt that. He is glad to see you and the old master. He is fond of you both, and there is a place in his partitioned heart for you. But his green eyes are hard beneath the brightness as if he understands that though the palace is quiet tonight, it is not at peace. This is not a reunion between old friends.</p><p>“Sit,” your master commands.</p><p>He does. Obedience cannot be ascribed to Khalid, you think, but it is a very smooth motion nonetheless. No hesitation at all. Tinged by memory perhaps; your master had been his too once, in a wayward sort of way and such relationships are hard to forget.</p><p>“If your wants have not changed then we must begin,” your master says in his ice-clear voice. Everyone must know is a misnomer, for the work has never stopped.</p><p>“My mind has not changed,” Khalid says, “I will still be King.”</p><p>There is no other acknowledgement needed. Your master kneels until his forehead touches the ground. And you, for you there is more expected. You kneel behind your master until your forehead touches the ground. The bricks are still warm with the afternoon sun. When your master rises, you shuffle forward and you press a kiss first to his left foot, then his right. You do not raise your head at all. He could count all the rises and dips of your spine if he wanted. Your hands are splayed upwards so that he might see the scars that adorn each palm. Oathmarks once made, now renewed.</p><p>There had been a boy once who asked you not to do that. <em>We are both forgotten children so we are quite similar right? Since we’re the same, you must not do that for me anymore.</em> It is a relief when Khalid does not say anything at all. You have no doubt there is a grimace in his eyes, but no matter how much he dislikes these rituals of obedience they must still be borne. The heaviest oaths are always bound in blood, for all Almyrans know blood runs true where words may waver. Blood once shed cannot be taken back. Scars once carved cannot be erased. When you rise and meet his eyes again, you see the grimace in his eyes. For the first time tonight, you see the small boy you’d once knew. The one who had held your wrist and sat at your bedside when the wounds festered and the fever came – the one who promised that in his Almyra, no one would ever need to cut their palm to anchor an oath. That boy is still there glinting like a banked flame behind Khalid’s eyes.</p><p>His ideals are so high and lofty, but to change tradition is to take a blade to bone. Almyra is old and enduring. The grasslands and the sky and the plateau and the forests and the lakes; the land itself is unyielding. Whether Almyra will survive Khalid’s changes is one question, but first he must win the chance. To each prince Almyra gives the same birthright and to the strongest only, the crown and the promise of a future at all.</p><p>The Almyran royal family is as such: the sitting King is the third son of a most favored concubine who was later raised Queen Mother and has since passed away. He had four other brothers and two sisters; all four brothers are dead, three by the King’s order and one to illness in a faraway land. Both sisters were married to minor princes and though there are sons born of these marriages, they are not so strong as to be contenders for the throne. This is of little comfort though, for there are more than enough heirs. The King has four sons and three daughters born from three consorts. Among them, Khalid is the youngest.</p><p>Khalid’s mother holds the title of Queen. She is the apple of the King’s eye and the moon of his life, but she is a foreigner. She has no clan and no family within Almyra. There are no cousins or uncles or aunts or grandparents whom might close ranks around them. There is no province upon whose riches Khalid might draw, upon whose men Khalid might call. All the Queen can offer Khalid is a foreign birthright and a mother’s love. There is also the love of the King. It is a weighty thing and indeed it is the shield that protects Tiana well, but even this shield cannot protect a prince who wishes to be king. A half-breed brother might be suffered to live, and permitted exile upon the next King’s ascension over the expected noose, but no such mercies existed for a brother that wished to be King.</p><p>It is wretched work to protect a young prince with no resources at all. The other princes and princesses might find safety among family. They may make marriages, take and give concubines, and mete out favors – the jade from Herat! Sunsteeds from the High Plains! Bright lapis lazuli as blue as the depths of the sea from Sar-i-sang! Sandalwood and myrrh, gold and silver, sea-steel blades from the workshops of Damaclea! What does Khalid have? Khalid has nothing but a shadow at his side, a blade in the dark.</p><p>A fine blade; not the strongest nor the smartest ever forged by your master, but the most tenacious. He would allow you that you think, and not just in a fit of fondness brought on by old age. A loyal blade. All shadows are loyal. It is a requirement of the upbringing, but there are types of loyalty and not all are equal.</p><p>Some do what they are commanded.</p><p>Some do what they think is right.</p><p>Some do what is needed.</p><p>True loyalty is to be as a blade in the hand of a lord-master, to move according to the master’s will only and to cleave clearly through all obstacles in the master’s path. It is a shame, you think, that even if you are a fine blade, you are human still. There is a human heart and there are things which this heart cannot stand. To move only on command and will - that is the true loyalty of a blade; and yet, sometimes there are things which must be done.</p><p>Sometimes what is needed is not willed. To move against the master’s will, for the sake of the master – there is loyalty in that too.</p><p>*</p><p>General Nader hefts Khalid by his hip and bodily tosses him over his head. Khalid tumbles head over heels and hits the side of the training ring with a resounding thud. It is followed with a good-natured laugh that echoes and is followed by the general’s louder, resounding laughter. All the yard can hear and so everyone knows that, despite the years that have passed, the great general Nader still loves his student like a son of his own blood.</p><p>You watch this from the branches of a tree. Well-hidden enough so that no one would notice, but not so well-hidden so as to be invisible. There are times when invisibility is needed, and there are other times when a silent reminder is enough. The people that need to know will know that you are there, that Khalid is still guarded – as with all members of the royal family – by a shadowed blade. Nader comes to stand beneath this tree so that the both of you watch as he leaves. Together, you watch as the grooms and serving girls crowd around Khalid and laugh at him. He is well loved by the smallfolk. If only that were enough.</p><p>“So,” Nader asks, his gaze never leaving Khalid’s back.</p><p>“He let you throw him; he could have had you on the eighth move. He knew you were going to feint left.”</p><p>“But he let the bout go on another ten blows and let me toss him like a child again.”</p><p>You do not shrug. Nader is not looking at you so he cannot see it and wasted movement is a sin. You wait for the general to speak, though you can tell by the way he shifts to his left foot that the knowledge already lies between you both.</p><p>Nader sighs. From above, you can see his jaw tighten. “He is soft-hearted still.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“I am a King’s Blade.”</p><p>What Nader means is this: he has taken oaths to the King of Almyra and he serves only the King. He has severed his ties to family and home. When he fights, his glory is all for the King and though he loves Khalid like the son that he has never had, like a child of his own blood and bone, he will stand at the King’s side and watch Khalid die if that is what it comes to. If the King asked it, Nader would strangle him with his own hands. It is by the King’s order that Nader became his arms master all those years ago, and it was the King’s order that sent Nader and his men across the border into the east to Khalid’s aid. Nader loves Khalid dearly, but he is the King’s in entirety.</p><p>The King loves Khalid. Everyone knows this. But he is King to Almyra and his duty to Almyra demands that Khalid be strong enough to take the crown himself. There are few things worse a King can do than pass the crown to an unworthy successor, and no love, however true and deep, is worth the breaking of Almyra.</p><p>“A soft-hearted lord demands a sharp-edged blade.”</p><p>“Yes,” you say, though it does not need to be said at all.</p><p>The general reaches into his sash and holds up a folded piece of paper in offering. You take it swiftly and tuck it into your top to be examined later where there are no wandering eyes. He is gone after that, walking away as if he’d spoken to no one at all. You sit in the tree for only a moment longer until routine has settled back on the yard and slip away beyond whitewashed walls and verdant gardens.</p><p>In the courtyard, you open the paper and find a dried crocus between it. There are no words but the orange-saffron of the stamen has stained the thin paper with its vividness. You fold it closed again. You understand. What had Nader said? A soft-hearted lord demands a sharp-edged blade.</p><p>Part of you does not wish to show your master. He is old now and it is cruelty to hurt the elderly. But he is master and forger of shadows and it is crueler still to treat him as an old man. You find him under the acacia, and kneel before him. This action is enough to grab his attention. You have always been diligent in your filial duties, but obedience is not in your character any more than it is in Khalid’s. Your master opens both eyes and you offer the paper to him with both hands so that he might see.</p><p>“Ah,” he says, “I have seen this flower before.”</p><p>Only the wind moves. For a moment, you think that your master will reach out and touch the flower. But instead, he folds the paper back up to enclose it again. He feeds it to a lantern solemnly. The flower had been fresh, but the wetness of it does not generate any smoke. Even against the small flame of a lantern it is only a single flower. It blooms silently and disappears silently, without a trace.</p><p>“Go,” he says.</p><p>There is nothing more to be said, only things which must be done. You go.</p><p>*</p><p>The next week, there is a feast when the minor prince of Khorasan comes. Such events are a cause for celebration, for food and music and good cheer are always in abundance at a feast as are all the officials and courtiers. The minor princes of Almyra rarely travel to the eastern capitol in the summer, and the court is eager for the excuse to dress up. It does not surprise you at all when Khalid comes by your quarters and asks which sash he should wear.</p><p>This is the sort of question one might direct at a valet or servant girl and though Khalid has no clan and few supporters, he has never been a charmless boy. There are servants who are his in entirety, bought with some years-old kindness and whom serve his every need with attentiveness and loyalty of heart. People who care for beauty and know the aesthetic values this embroidery over that pattern. You can place the pattern in any of the tribes or weaving guild, but that's an assassin's skill. One that generates information, but does not provide any insight into fashion. Still, Khalid comes to you. He unties one sash and tries on another. He cocks his hips and you wonder, idly, if he’s been spending time with the dancing girls. He holds the bright fabric up so that you may see the patterns better.</p><p>It is green and yellow. The yellow is bright, but does not have the sheen of cloth-of-gold, perhaps it is delphinium? A dozen yellow stags run through the pine-needle-patterns and you know instinctively that this is not a thing of Almyra. Oh yes, it is Almyran cloth. It is embroidered in the Almyran style by an artisan of no small skill, and Khalid knots and tucks it around his waist like any other Almyran sash, but the pattern itself is not.</p><p>Stags are few in Almyra. The high mountains and steep vales are home to sure-footed rams. Gazelle race across the grass plains. Deer though are limited to the eastern border. Sometimes, in the pine forests, a hunter might find a grand stag, but they are largely for the easterners. What needs does Almyra have of grand stags? Almyra is the high planes and the wide sky. Almyra is the broad horizon and the wyverns soaring high.</p><p>“The red one suits you better,” you say.</p><p>His eyes flash with the candlelight. “I am fond of this though.”</p><p>“Yes,” you say, “I am sure you are, but still the red suits you better.”</p><p>The prince’s fingers trail the madder-red cloth draped across the table. In the flickering dimness, it seems darker, like a thick spill of blood across wood. His hand is bare and you can see the bow callouses thick on his fingers. His hand smooths flat and then clenches the cloth as if to test its softness.</p><p>“The green one brings out my eyes,” he says with a small smile. Depreciating, though easily mistaken as rakish to the unfamiliar. This prince of yours has never sought to clear up such misconceptions. It is true that they serve in their own way. He half tilts his head so he can gaze up at you through his eyelashes. You do not break the gaze. He has his mother’s eyes, bright and sharp and warm and as green as cerulean glaze – certainly, it is not the pine-green of Almyra.</p><p>“Yes,” you say, “all the more reason to go with the red.”</p><p>Sometimes Khalid’s eyes are too bright and you are never sure if he is staring deeply into you or at something beyond your shoulder and out of your line of sight. It’s the sort of gaze that makes you ask: In his heart of hearts, is he here or is he somewhere else?</p><p>He turns his head away and does not reply. But he wears the red sash to the feast and sits amongst his elder brothers and sisters and one sees only his father’s strong nose, only the darkness of his hair, the wyvern-ring in his ear. When he laughs it is like the spring breeze carrying over the plains of Almyra ushering in the yearly thaw.</p><p>The minor prince of Khorasan does not look twice at Khalid. He looks like a part of the court, as if he’d never left and he’s always belonged here.</p><p>*</p><p>On the moonless night, without any intent at all, you find Khalid in the western-quarter. He is cloaked, but you would know him anywhere and you follow him down a maze of alleys, each darker and narrower and more squalid than the last. When he slips into a building, you follow. It is dark and dusty and Khalid ascends by himself to the upper level filled with books.</p><p>He searches them diligently, lamp raised and fingers gently drifting down the spines. You shadow him in the dark and run your own finger down a spine. There is no light, but you can feel the embossing beneath your finger and it is idle curiosity at first. You simply wish to know what he searches for with such care that he must do it himself. But your finger runs down spine after spine and your blood chills. You touch-read another, and then another, only to be sure and then you are no longer hiding.</p><p>You are at his side in a moment, pinning his hand against the shelf. In the light, you see the title fully. “Magic,” you hiss, “cease with this at once.”</p><p>Khalid does not look surprised to see you, nor should he since this is the very meaning of a shadow, but his still face does nothing to smother your anger. Does he think so lowly of you that he can keep such secrets? But as the moments pass and you do not let go, his expression narrows and he shakes your touch off.</p><p>“No,” he tells you simply. He raises the lantern and proceeds to search the lower shelf.</p><p>“You are already a half-blood, think you they will let it off? ‘The foreign mongrel entrenched in foreign magics, and oh! If that isn’t how his foreign mother had enchanted the King’ – you think they will not say these things?”</p><p>“Only you know,” he says which is untrue because did not a man open the door to admit him? Was there not a baker on the previous corner already awake and making the next day’s bread? You are making lists in your mind. “And I cannot stop. There is someone who needs this information.”</p><p>“This information is a knife at your neck, already pressed to the skin.” You’re hissing now, but this doesn’t seem to bother Khalid at all.</p><p>“It is the difference between a knife at my throat and a life-sentence already passed. I will choose the knife every time.”</p><p>This prince of yours! So soft-hearted! It would be more forgivable were he dumb and naïve but he is not. More than anyone else, he knows the weight of words and the consequences of actions. It is not that he does not know what the courtiers will say. It is not that he does not understand magic is a coward’s way, a foreign weapon, a warded and reviled knowledge. It is that he knows this and still, he chooses to stick his hand straight into the fire. Something is out there, in the world beyond your gaze, something which drives him down this path. Not something, you understand instantly, no, Khalid's ideals are eclipsing. He does not have room for more things in his heart - it is a person, it must be. </p><p>“Who is it?” You demand as your grip tightens on his wrist. But he is not the boy of your youth and his wrist is no longer a fragile one that you can span with your fingers. He does not give a single centimeter. “Who is it that binds you so tightly to that land?”</p><p>“A friend,” he says, but does not elaborate.</p><p>“You are here. This is Almyra, do you not understand? Fódlan is behind and you cannot return.”</p><p>It is more than you should have said, but too late to take it back. You let your hand fall back to your side. You straighten and take a step back so that you are not leaning into his face. He is, still, your prince and for all that your relationship is not as formal as it ought to be, still there is a distance that must be maintained and a respect that must be paid.</p><p>“It is behind me,” he says as if shedding that which is half his blood is as easy and natural as a snake shedding its skin. “I have no intention of going back. My path is set, but there are still some things within my power that I will do. If I can save a dear friend from her death, then I will do all that I can.”</p><p>“You are half-hearted. You are standing one-foot in and one-foot out.” And you think of Nader, of the way that Khalid let him throw him like a child again. You think of the Princess Zohreh and how Khalid had brought her the dried honey-dates she’d fed him in their youth, never mind that she is general and married to the greatest of minor princes. Never mind that Zohreh, favorite of the King’s daughters, for all her fondness and strength will never support Khalid. She can neither be his shield nor his sword; her husband is the second prince’s cousin. Zohreh rides a wyvern as red as pomegranate syrup with a hundred sworn riders at her back but no matter how high she soars she cannot escape the ties of blood.</p><p>You think: a soft-hearted master must have a sharp-edged blade.</p><p>Khalid’s eyes flash like quicksilver and he leans forward into your space now. You can feel his breath on your neck. Even though you know him better than the back of your hand, still there is a shiver of fear down the length of your spine. Khalid has the brightest sun smile and the coldest calculating eye. He sees further and truer than others, and for all that his words shimmer like bright banners, he has never lied. He knows where your thoughts have run even though you speak no words at all.</p><p>“Thinking of murder again? You cannot murder my way to the throne.”</p><p>Untrue, untrue, you think. Your prince is soft-hearted and half his blood is eastern and he has no clan behind him but he has a blade; one with a sharp edge and trained by the master of shadows and you will always do what is needed. Always. If it is you, for him, then there is always a way. You will find it.</p><p>“Will you kill all my brothers?”</p><p>You can hear his heart beat slow and steady. You can feel the heat of his skin. You can’t lie to him like this, he would know. But there is truth, and there is truth-truth, and half-truth, and all the twists and turns in-between. Some things must be buried where no one else may see them.</p><p>“No, you know I cannot.” The words come easily enough, and you can meet his gaze without guilt. “It is a death-crime to kill a member of the royal family and you would have two brothers still.”</p><p>He grimaces. Khalid is always so careful with his words that he hates it most when others twist their meaning. But it is true. You cannot knife one brother and the other two in quick enough succession to prevent your own capture. There are no conceivable circumstances where you can kill all three in one go and clear the way to the crown for your prince. This was a plan you'd set aside long ago.</p><p>“And if I had but the one, you would kill him.”</p><p>“In a heartbeat.”</p><p>“Never mind that you would hang for it?”</p><p>“If it meant securing your life, gladly.”</p><p>“Have you ever considered that there is a life outside of this-” his hand waves in a motion you take to mean all of Almyra. Though Khalid has stood very still for all this time, he moves with such vehemence now that the lantern shakes. Shadows and light everywhere. “Why must you be like this? You are not a blade – you are a person. You don’t have to live like this.”</p><p>Silence. Outside the stars disappear beneath a thick cover of clouds and the lantern settles and stills. Half-shadowed and half-lit, Khalid stares at you searching. For what, and whether he finds it, you are unsure. Only, after a moment, he says: “Do not kill again. I have seen enough blood for a lifetime.” This you believe as truth for his voice is tired and weary. “And do not die for me. I forbid it.”</p><p>You press your hand to your chest and bow so he knows that you have heard, and then you go into the night. You run through the list of people and you know, there are types of loyalty that demand absolute obedience, and there is the loyalty that demands sacrifice of everything else; to do what is needed, even if it is not wanted.</p><p>*</p><p>Within the shade of the acacia tree, your master reads a compilation of poems. You drop the <em>sohan</em> at his side and then take your position on your knees. The afternoon slowly melts into evening. For dinner there is simple bread and nettle soup chilled to match the summer heat.</p><p>As the sun begins its downward arc, your master puts his reading down. He leans against an old pillow, one of the few in the courtyard. Its continued existence is allowed only because of its providence. It is a gift from a most beloved child. Your master has no children of his own body, and though he’s spent a life-time teaching you the relationship between him and his pupils is better understood as between the smith and the blade. But there is love within him, for a girl-child once entrusted to his care, one who was raised in a garden of winter crocus.</p><p>“Summer is past its zenith, soon the winter saffron will come to market and will bring great wealth with it. Before that, the crocus must be culled.”</p><p>You have never doubted what decision he would make. And you have never doubted that it would be made at the right time, but still you think that your master has steeled himself. He is ready now.</p><p>“I understand.”</p><p>“It must be done soon. As soon as possible.”</p><p>You bow your head down to the ground and feel the warm there, and leave without another word. There is a silence in the courtyard that is heavier than all others. It is the cut-flower sound of sorrow, so thick and heavy; it is the sound of resignation.</p><p>*</p><p>When you were a child, you lived within the white walls of that courtyard. There was a world outside the walls, one in which those who birthed you lived, but it was not your world. Your entire world existed within. Your master was younger then though his brow was no less severe and his students were still around. Some of the older ones had left already – the first prince’s Iraj, and the first princess’ Hayat – but the others were still in training with you.</p><p>The shadow assigned to the second princess was a girl named Safa. She shared your pallet at night and had a knack for netting sweets from the shops. It was her countenance, Iraj said, it made people remember their young daughters back home. As for you, you remember sticky layers of phyllo split in two, nougat that stuck to teeth, sweet syrup licked off each other’s hands. When all the others had left to follow their masters out into the world, Safa and you had stayed. The two youngest, destined for the two youngest royal children. Willow-quick, your master had called her, and given her to the second princess to be guard and companion both.</p><p>Safa is waiting for you when you drop over the wall, silent as death. The moon is out, and the guards are either unaware or incapacitated. Safa, though, is standing on the veranda waiting for you as if she knew exactly when and where you would show up. You are not surprised. You were bedmates once, and Safa had seen more than half your training. She knew how you thought.</p><p>Words between you are unnecessary, and blades are drawn in an instant. Safa darts across the courtyard and beneath her willow-step the flower petals rise and fall. But if Safa has watched half your training, then so too have you watched her's. When all the others had left, there was no one else to spar against. You know each other well and reflect like shadows across a mirror. The difference is only that the second princess has a powerful mother and her blood-brother is the most powerful among the princes. Safa could fall here and there would be others at the princess’ side. Your prince has no one else, only you. This knowledge burns inside you like an ever-burning flame, an unquenchable truth. If you fall Khalid will die. That's a certainty. A flash of steel is enough to decide the outcome of this last fight.</p><p>Safa stands still, but then she staggers and you can see the dark blood staining her silks. You catch her because you cannot allow the sound of her falling to alert anyone. She is warm in your arms and still smells faintly of jasmine as she always has. It surprises you that she weighs exactly as you remember. The sun-filled days of your youth are behind you but somehow the familiarity has weathered the years and remains lodged in your memory. Your breath catches only once, but your heartbeat doesn’t change. There is a part of you that thinks she is owed more. Safa only says, “The wedding was to be in Khorasan in two weeks, we would have left tomorrow. Your timing is impeccable as always.” Then her head lulls to your shoulder and she speaks no more. You slide her body gently to the ground and leave it there amongst the trampled flowers. The moon is rising still, the night not yet finished.</p><p>In the main chamber, you stick to the wall ledge and walk as quietly as possible. The guards have all been taken care of, the patrol routes memorized, and the most dangerous guardian already neutralized. But still, it is better to be safe than sorry. You mean for it to be a quick death, painless and unseen. But the second princess is waiting for you. The flames still flickering in her lamps and her back to the door, her face to the open window. When you stepped through it, her eyes caught you and held you there.</p><p>“So then, you have killed Safa. She had always spoken of you like a sibling that I had thought –” And then she laughs, sharp and bitter. “No,” she says, “no I should not have thought that. This is the palace where a king’s first act must be to execute all his brothers. I have nothing more to say. Come shadow, show me what death you have planned for me.”</p><p>The death you had planned was a poisoned dagger in the back, between the fourth and fifth ribs. But now that stealth is no longer needed, you produce a vial from within your shirt. It is a bitter thick oil that promises a painless, slow slide into unconsciousness and then, death. When you pass it to her, it is still warm from your skin. The princess takes it and drinks it without any explanation at all. You sit and watch. It is the least owed to such a woman.</p><p>After fifteen minutes, her eyes begin to droop. She looks at you and in a voice that is soft and intimate she says, perhaps not to you, but to someone else, someone would could not hear and was not here at all: “He was my brother, he brought me <em>bamie</em> and <em>pashmak</em> and carried me on his shoulders so that I might reach the flowers. He took me on his wyvern so that we might fly over the top of the pine forests and to the sea. How could I have let him die - how could I have chosen otherwise?”</p><p>You close her eyes when she passes, and lower her to lie on the ground so her body will not stiffen into an ugly position. She is owed this dignity too, not only for her royal blood but for her strength and sacrifice. Khorasan is rich in saffron and saffron is worth more than three times its weight in gold. You know what your prince would say. There are other ways to defeat an enemy; trade and information and words and lies and gold. The right person placed in the right place and used at the right time might be more effective than a thousand warriors. But look here at what flowers and gold buy – is it not better to have a sharp blade instead?</p><p>*</p><p>For three days, the palace is in an uproar. The first prince mourns his sister with open vengeance and the first concubine tears her hair and wails behind her palace walls. She rejects food for three days and will not even see the King when he comes to console her. No one doubts that the second princess was murdered and no one doubts what it means, though which of the princes is responsible is really up in the air. The prince of Khorasan and his son mourn too, but are quickly sent back to Khorasan. Whether by the hand of the first prince whose alliance was dashed, or by another royal faction eager to remove them from the equation, or by their own choice is unknown.</p><p>There is no formal declaration, nor is there an entreaty for justice from the King. Both the first prince and his mother know better than to expect that. But the morning after when the first prince shows up to court in mourning clothes, you can see Khalid’s eyes flash bright. His gaze finds you even through the people and he looks at you with all the sharpness of a whetted blade. All the court guesses and points fingers but you can see that he knows the truth of the matter. You expect his reprimand, but it never comes. Mourning does not stop anything and the wheel continues to turn. The battle plays out in the background of the court procedure and in the provinces and borderlands where there is less oversight and thus more room for the factions to leverage their strength. Salt prices go up because the merchants cannot cross the mountain pass. Madder red dye and Almyran gold disappear from the market. The price of saffron holds stable, as does rice. Sugar starts to disappear. For all of three weeks, the capitol city suddenly faces the stark possibility that there will be no <em>baklava</em>, <em>bamie</em>, or <em>khakshir</em> on their tables which incites no small amount of panic. Luckily though, this fate is avoided by the timely arrival of traders from Derdriu. Trade convoys from the barbarian lands have always been scarce, but with the court’s ambivalence and your princes’ letters, some merchants do make the trek to the capitol. With their salt and sugar and reasonable prices, they find a warmer welcome in Almyra than could have been expected. You wonder if Khalid had included that in his letters too. Does his influence stretch so far in the eastern lands?</p><p>Your prince does not sign these letters “His Radiance” which is unusual even if you know that he has never liked this most formal of titles. But he does not sign them “Khalid of Almyra” nor even “Khalid, son of Tiana”. Either of these would be suitable for correspondence between close acquaintances. No, he signs them “your friend, Claude” and you want to follow the letters into the hands of their intended recipients if only to know who in this world calls your prince by such a name. Of course, there are more pressing matters in Almyra and so you cannot go. It is the most you can do to hold that name in your chest and contemplate it. Claude rolls off the tongue funny – too foreign and yet still close enough to Almyran to be pronounceable. Not quite hiding the truth of his identity, but almost presenting it tilted to the side. Khalid. Claude. The same person, just viewed through a different angle, a different light. You wonder at this Claude who collects old books on magic, who walks the markets as a normal man, who belongs to the world outside Almyra. One day perhaps you will come to know him, this other man who is both your prince and not, but on the whole, you think he will forever remain unknown.</p><p>Khalid guards his memories and his time in the east with a ferociousness that surprises you and belies his own words. It is hidden somewhere even you cannot puzzle into. For you there is only Khalid, half-shadowed in the walkways of the grand court, eyes raised to the blue sky as if looking into another future.</p><p>*</p><p>Summer wanes, and the distinct crispness of autumn starts to creep into the air. The reprimand you expect never comes and so it fades away into the morning mist. You do not think he is the sort of person to forget a debt, but perhaps there are more important ones to collect on.</p><p>Your quarters are sparse. Spartan, maybe, but they match the courtyard in which you and your master reside. You’ve a simple table, a chair, and a basic pallet. Two cloaks hang on the wall, one oil-cloth for the winter, and another simpler for everyday usage. There’s a pitcher of mint tea on the table, still somehow mystically cool. Perhaps a gift from an observant serving girl or the old eunuch. Your drink as you examine your daggers.</p><p>They’ve been cleaned outside the palace walls already of course, but you live and die by these blades and this habit has been deeply ingrained. Satisfied with their state, you sheath them again and let them sit on the table. It would be naïve to consider any part of the palace truly safe, but some are safer than others and this is one of them. The courtyard is your master’s and one day it will be yours, passed on in a lineage just as long and unbroken as the Kings of Almyra.</p><p>It’s a hot night. You open the window shutters to let in a cool breeze. You unlace your boots and between tugging the left one off and starting on the right one, Khalid is leaning against the window frame. His hair is dark and his wyvern ring glints through it, a bright undeniable existence. His posture is lax, but you can see the fault line of tension running underneath it all. <em>Ah</em>, you understand, <em>he’s come to collect after all.</em></p><p>“I was searching for you today and did not find you,” his eyes sharpen, “where were you?”</p><p>You ignore him in favor of your boot, which is unlaced neatly and then pulled off and set besides its pair. It feels like you’ve been waiting for this moment for so long that it no longer triggers any reaction at all. No panic. No steeling. Nothing at all. Fight or flight, you think, it should be one or the other.</p><p>“Good evening to you too, radiance,” you say. You raise an eyebrow at him and wrap your lie in a casual tone entirely unbefitting of your station. “I was in the western bazaar today – if you had need of me, you ought to have mentioned it earlier.”</p><p>Khalid cannot call you on this lie because he spends every Thursday sparring with Nader, then tending to his wyvern, and then his afternoons are devoted to his mother. The closest gate to his residence is the Blue Wing gate, and the one he prefers to use is the eastern kitchen gate, and neither sentries had reported any movement to you today. Still, he knows you are lying. You can see that in his smile which is sharp like a cutting blade, but brittle like untempered iron.</p><p>“Mother had mint tea today and <em>ranginak</em>, I sent people to find you since you love both so dearly but they couldn’t find you.” It would sound like banter to anyone else, but it’s sickly sweet and sticks to the back of your throat. Too much sugar in the tea, perhaps? But Khalid doesn’t keep the saccharine tone, his voice levels out again and he asks again: “Where were you?”</p><p>That doesn’t even dignify a response but there’s a slow trickle heat in your belly that makes you feel languid and you have the sudden desire to roll your eye at him. Maybe lean forward so he can see straight down your shirt.</p><p>“It is not like the servants of the inner court can leave the palace –” the statement ends in an aborted giggle. Distantly, you think that this is absurd. You haven’t giggled in a least a decade, there is no reason to giggle like a besotted child at all. But in proximity, all you think is that Khalid is playing dumb with you. He knows better than anyone else that the palace servants live and serve and die behind the palace walls. One of them could no sooner find you in the western bazaar any more than they could sprout wings and fly.</p><p>Somehow, he’s closer now, standing in front of you and blocking out the night breeze. You wish he wouldn’t – it’s still hot and you can feel a sticky heat gathering along your collar bones. The moments fuzz up and then, his hand is under your chin, tilting it upwards. The touch is electric. You can feel the roughness of the bow callouses scrapping against your skin, you know that he’s held a sword recently that –</p><p>“You still won’t tell me the truth?”</p><p>Khalid’s eyes are green. Bright and sharp. Like the edge of a blade. In that moment all you can think is that he shares this trait with his mother, and that you can understand when the King says he had fallen into those eyes and never found his way back out. Poetry, yes, flattery born of love, yes, but you understand all the same how a person could be swallowed by them in entirety.</p><p>More than the heat, it’s his eyes that drain your rationality and you lean in for a kiss, miss his lips and end up mouthing his cheek, his neck, before pressing your head into the crook of his shoulder. You can taste the sun on his skin, the salt, the dust, the wind and they all scream Almyra. His hand is at your neck and that does startle you enough for a moment of lucidity. You push away from him and find your back pressed to the wall. The room is all of a sudden too small altogether. Your pulse is thundering in your throat and your thoughts are ping-ponging back and forth like you’ve taken three cups of <em>aragh sagi</em> straight.</p><p>“You don’t wish to tell me-”</p><p>The mint tea, the heat, the smell of Khalid’s skin, the heat on an autumn’s night, how he’d appeared at just the right time as if he knew. The parts are falling in place faster than you can think. Heat, and mint tea, and Khalid.</p><p>Khalid who is half-and-half and nothing in entirety at all, half-shadowed; Khalid who flies from the world that you know into the world beyond and then back again without blinking an eye. Khalid of the green eyes, shining and bright and full of truth and belief and trust, but not trusting at all. Khalid who questions everything and raises his hand against anything, even his own shadow.</p><p>“- or you don’t trust me?”</p><p>Khalid, who no matter what others may think, has never told a lie. He is proud in this way, almost vain when it comes to his own cunning. No lying needed at all. Instead, he draws half-truths and flippant words together until you’re lost in his rhythm and take up the beat for him. Then, with the right amount of pressure, or poison, applied at the right time, the truth comes out anyways.</p><p>You laugh. It’s slurred, warm like wine left in the sun. “It’s you who doesn’t trust me, is it not?” You pull at your collar and each centimeter of exposed skin feels like a gift. It’s so hot, hot, the truth is bubbling under your tongue and you want to press your face into his hand. Your self-control is a rapidly unspooling thread. This is wrong. You shouldn’t speak to him so flippantly, and there are things that should not be said. Actions taken that you’d sworn never to share with the soft-hearted lord you guarded. Promises made to yourself.</p><p>But just like you want to pull your shirt off and lick a straight line from his neck to his navel, you want to peel back your skin until he can see the flesh and sinew. You want to look at him straight on, so that he sees you entire and not just the profile you’ve always presented. You want to hold his face in your hands and force himself to look at you raw, stripped of childhood memories and nostalgia.</p><p>You want to say: I have killed for you. I have killed for you, and I will kill for you and even when you tell me not to, I will always choose the blade. A blade is direct, is quick, is irrevocable. Blood is truer than words, and even when you break this country open and remake her, it will always be this way. A life for a life, and there is no life I would not trade for yours.</p><p>It would hurt him to know this. You should stay silent and swallow these confessions. But your blood is hot and throbbing in your neck. You can feel the heat roiling in your veins as if fighting to be let out. Inhibitions and promises float away on a wave of lust and it is telling, you think, <em>so</em> telling that this is the poison he chooses.</p><p>“I was at the White Egret market.”</p><p>“What for?”</p><p>“To find the alchemist you spoke with last week-”</p><p>Khalid knows exactly where this is going. “And you killed him?”</p><p>“I did,” you confirm. It makes you feel giddy to say it. He’ll be cross and there will be reprimands and punishment but, well you’ve never truly feared his ire. Khalid is not cruel or merciless like the other princes. He will not demand a hand severed, a tongue cut out, a flogging delivered. Iraj had the sweetest singing voice, smokey and somehow clear and dark as amber honey. The first prince had her tongue cut out because he wanted a shadow who could never spill secrets and Khalid. Khalid is not like that. He is <em>not</em>.</p><p>But Iraj would have never gone against her master anyways, she always preached that the master was the master, was the like the sun in the sky, and what were they? <em>Shadows, no more, like small beings trapped in a well. What could we understand of the world, small as we are asalam?</em> She would have never repeated a single word, let alone a secret. She would never go against her master’s wishes, but Khalid had given you one order – <em>do not kill again</em> – and you’d thrown it to the wind. How is that fair?</p><p>“I did,” you say again, firmer, “I cut his throat and let him bleed out in the street.” And then, because you know that your master is soft-hearted in all the ways that matter you add, “his daughter found his body.” His eyes go sharper still at that, involuntarily you hope. Maybe he will clench his fists. You do not know why, but in that moment, heady and half-addled, mind swimming with heat and memories of Iraj and Safa and sweet syrup, you want to be punished. You want the knife’s edge, the sting of the whip, the master’s back hand.</p><p>But Khalid takes a breath. His hands flex at his side. He pushes his hair out back with a hand and straightens up. He meets your gaze and there are things there you do not want to name. He breaks the gaze first and his shoulders fall on exhale.</p><p>“You are a person,” he says with a rawness, “I know you have been told otherwise your entire life but you are a person.”</p><p>But no. No that’s not it. That’s not it at all: <em>I am a blade. I am a shadow. I am yours; the only thing between you and the raw noose or the hidden blade. I will bridge the present and the future you want with my body. Use me-</em></p><p>It’s easier to be a blade. One day it will be you watching as the students you’ve raised have their tongues cut off, or their backs whipped raw. One day, it will be you, closing your eyes and sending a blade to collect the life of another child, maybe one you love. It is unbearable. But in the service of a king, a worthy king, a master –</p><p>“You are free to do as you want. You don’t have to stay here, there is a world outside of this that is your’s if you want.”</p><p>Khalid is looking at you and you are looking back but you feel as if you can’t see him at all. Khalid is here – where else would you be if not here? How could you exist separate of him? But you don’t even have the coherency to ask where you would go. You just stare at him. <em>You don’t have to stay here</em> echoes in your mind like a bone snapping.</p><p>Whatever he sees in your face is enough to make him look away and leave. Maybe he says something else. Maybe he touches your shoulder, your hand. Maybe he caresses your cheek, a fleeting touch full of longing or something else. You don’t know. Everything’s gone blurry. It’s like when you were fourteen and riding on the back of a warrior’s wyvern, soaring through the skies and into the wind. You couldn’t hear anything at all, just the wind howling all around you. It’s all you can do to stare at the space he once occupied.</p><p>The sweat is cooling on your skin sticky. The sweetness in your mouth is turning acrid with each breath. You should go to the bathhouse and cleanse yourself. You should eat half a stick of charcoal and rinse your mouth with salt water until your throat stings and the poison is gone. Instead, you turn in your bed until you face the wall and you think that it is regret that sits like a frozen stone in your stomach.</p><p>*</p><p>But you will wake up tomorrow, and you would do it again.</p><p>You would live this life again, all of it. With all the regret, and all the pain, even with Safa’s blood on your hands. Iraj’s and Hayat’s and Houtan’s, and Arash’s too. You would kill them all, these siblings of sweat and steel, the only family you’ve ever known, if it meant securing a future for Khalid.</p><p>You would like to say it is not for the boy you once knew. But when you were six and given to him like a dog, when you’d split your own palms bone deep, too deep for a child, when the fever took you for seven nights and even your master had left you to your fate; Khalid had held your wrist. He had gripped it as if to tether you to this world and promised you a future where things would not be like this. How could you be a blade unfeeling for someone like that?</p><p>To be a blade in the dark with no honor or pride, one must love something greater than themselves. For love – yes, for love. For the boy from your memories and his tender heart; for the man who returned, and his lofty ideals. For the touch of rough bow-calloused fingers and the bright gleam of a wyvern ring flashing in his ear. For him and his cerulean-green eyes, deep as the oceans and as fathomless as the future.</p><p>For Almyra too.</p><p>Not for the Almyra that is, the Almyra that endures. Not for her wide plains or deep rivers, nor her deep pine forests or her high white mountains. But for the Almyra that could be. You do not know what this Almyra looks like. The future is nothing more than a swirl of darkness to you. But Khalid looks into the darkness and he sees something and he has never stopped walking towards it.</p><p>And you love him for this too. For the future he holds in his heart of hearts where girl-children like Safa may dance with the spring wind and eat <em>baklava</em> without splitting it, and Iraj’s song might echo free across the valleys. Where the second princess may be loved and doted on by an old retainer without resignation. You don’t know where you stand in this future. At his side, perhaps, though truly you think there is no place for someone like you in this future Almyra. In this Almyra, there is nothing a soft-hearted lord must be protected from. They may laugh and smile without knives, and they may love all their children without fear or distance, and there is no blade hoovering in their shadow like a promise.</p><p>As you rise from the pallet and push the thin blanket aside, you remember words from your childhood. The first lesson from your master when he had opened the door to that sparse courtyard for the first time. It had been your choice to cross the threshold the very first time, and there had been no turning back.</p><p>You have never forgotten those words.</p><p>
  <em>But first you must live, and sometimes the cost of living is high enough to make one wish for death. Even then you must live, for a blade never dies. A blade can only be discarded when the master no longer needs it. </em>
</p><p>You will never be the obedient blade. You will never shelter your master’s heart. You are a blade, not a shield, and a blade can only cut.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Also <b><i>deeply</i></b> inspired by Tamsyn Muir who said (paraphrase) "I wrote these novels for me" and you know what, I'm carrying that attitude forward. So here's my Claude von Reigan fic that caters, specifically and singularly, to me.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>